Elop Says Nokia is Putting All Its Eggs Into One Windows Phone 7 Basket

Around the time of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership where the companies announced that Nokia would eventually phase out its Symbian smartphone develop in favor of fully integrating Windows Phone 7, rumors were swirling about a speculated Plan B in the event that this doesn’t pan out. Now, in a CNBC interview, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a Microsoft alum who took over reigns to try to reinvigorate the company that has been declining since Apple and Android made large inroads in the consumer space, confirms Nokia’s Plan B. Plan B is exactly like Plan A, and with Elop’s comment, it seems that Nokia is fully committed to the success of the company dependent upon Microsoft and Windows Phone 7.

According to Elop, Nokia’s Plan B is to make Plan A successful, where Plan A is in reference to the Microsoft partnership for Windows Phone.

Plan B is to make sure that Plan A is very successful. The critical ingredient for success are there, consumers are saying the Windows brand operating system is very good. Better in terms of their satisfaction than the competing platforms, but Microsoft hasn’t had a partner doing its best work for Windows Phone. That’s the commitment Nokia made through this processor. By bringing together our hardware, software and services assets with the strengths that Microsoft brings, we have a formula we believe will drive great success.

With Nokia’s experience and scale at making great phones, hopefully the partnership will result in success for the two industry veterans who are trying to stay relevant in the mobile market. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, though greeted with enthusiasm and warm reception from media, has been slow in finding consumer adoption, and Nokia’s excellent hardware has recently been shunned as consumers find Nokia’s slow embrace of touchscreen UIs through Symbian a dealbreaker.

Given Microsoft’s excellent free 25 GB of storage space through SkyDrive and Nokia’s excellent 12-megapixel camera on the Nokia N8, I am cautiously optimistic that a fluid, modern Windows Phone 7 Metro UI married to Nokia’s hardware will be met with success.

Elop’s recent comment on the CNBC interview was perhaps given out of necessity rather than optimism given Nokia’s recently declining stock prices, prompting new speculation of an acquisition, and this time it’s rival Samsung who is rumored to be in talks to buy out Nokia.

Tech enthusiast in Silicon Valley enjoying the possibilities of ubiquitous connectivity, information sharing, and collaboration enabled by mobile broadband. You can contact Chuong on Twitter @chuongvision or search +chuongvision on Google+.

Nokia has completely misjudged the public antipathy towards Microsoft. And Microsoft has completely misjudged the brand equity in the “Windows” brand (which has negative brand equity at this point).

Nobody wants “Windows” on their phone. Windows is not synonymous with anything that consumers crave.

Microsoft is going to have to spend at least 100 million on marketing to convince users that iPhone and Android phones are less sexy. And with Microsoft’s history of slow, buggy, security flawed releases — there is a near 100% chance that Microsoft will fail to even create a competitive product.

This is a two horse race: Apple and Android. And it looks like Android will come down to three manufacturers: LG, Samsung and HTC.

Blackberry is doomed. Nokia is doomed. And Microsoft will putter along thanks to OS dominance and a gaming division that is actually crushing its competition.

Perhaps, but that’s yesterday’s dominance, and they are painfully aware of it.

Microsoft dominates only on the desktop – Apple dominates tablets, and Linux dominates everywhere else. But the desktop is the weakest computing segment as consumers move to mobile devices where Microsoft has failed to establish even a toehold.

Console gaming is being slowly replaced by mobile gaming, and again Microsoft has failed to engage in this critical market.

Microsoft will indeed putter along like a zombie, not because of the two thanks you suggest IMHO, but rather because they have a huge pile of cash to survive their lack of innovation for many years to come. Hmmm… perhaps “shamble” would be a better word? ;-)

@google-fdc2ee9b009016473d408eab10580a53:disqus : “…if it had the word iMagic, and you were told it’s the successor to the iphone, you would be ranting and raving on how awesome it is. Get my point?”
That’s hilarious. You think I’m a *Apple fan*! :-D The depth of your inability to think rationally about mobile products is revealed by your “Anybody who doesn’t drool uncritically over the Windows phone is obviously an Apply fan boy!” mentality.

They do want Windows Phone 7 on their phone when they actually see it and use it themselves. And once they know that the impressive Mango update will also work on their existing handset and will be available free, it’s actually a very sensible purchase with some very nice handsets available.

LOL nobody?
Or the nobodies that have their tech savvy and ego dependent on Android or Apple phones?
If thats the case, they HAVE NO TECH SAVVY.

One of the highest ratings of customer satisfaction from smartphones – comes from WP7 owners.
And this is WITHOUT the mango update coming out soon.

More developers are coming over the WP7 and WP7 one of the fastest growing stores ( based on where ios and android were at their point in time)

Business: WP7 complaints were that it did not sync with local computer’s mail/contact/calendar systems. It was actually by desin as the iPhone and Android wreak havoc with internal business shared contact and calendar systems. So iphone, android, and WP7 have been tried in business – and wp7 wins – and BB remains strong as ever in the business world.

If you want to look at buggy updates – no one beats iphone!! And they only owned 1 or 2 of their own phones!!!!! Android had so much trouble with earlier ones, that they left owners hanging saying that some of their phones simply will NEVER be updated.

So when you actually compare – WP7 is head and shoulders above iPhone and Android histories.

I like windows phone 7and windows 7, and I like microsoft office 2010 . I could say the same for the previous Milenniumm/Vista and the rpevious windows phone 6,6.5 OS or event the previous Office 2000.

I really notice a improvment and consistency in the recent software from Microsoft, and maybe that’s due to the .Net Framework concept…

The top of all is the Xbox 360, I own one with Kinectic, and I must the software is very good, the avatars, the achivments, they always bring me to the games, and that’s is a nice thing, also the zune pass is a very smart way of having all the music I want at a cheap price.

Apple will always have it’s market. It’s borderline religious. No, seriously, they did a study! :)

Anyway, Android is highly fragmented. Millions of phones out there and from one to the next you can have several variations of the OS. They have to pull that together.

As for WP7, I think any opinion is invalid unless you’ve actually tested one out for a reasonable amount of time. It’s still v1.0 (well maybe 1.1 now with NoDo?) and it’s a great OS. I own the Focus which I love. I can’t speak for the other handsets.

The app store is growing ever faster. Mango has a lot of great features coming as well.

I think the #1 thing Microsoft has to do is get into the retail stores. I’ve seen several articles and heard countless stories of salespeople blatantly pushing people away from WP7. People that go in specifically asking for it are told it’s not any good, it’s not up to par or that they’re basically stupid for wanting it. These same salespeople have likely never even used the very phone they are so very against.

It’s an uphill battle for MS but I’m sure the phone will do just fine once more and more people see it in action and actually use it. No, not everyone will love it but I think most everyone would say it’s a good solid mobile OS.